About Me

[in a cabin in the mountains, Jim wakes up and bangs his head on the table he was sleeping under]
Alex Rieger: Jim, are you alright?
"Reverend" Jim Ignatowski: Yeah...uh ... who are you?
Alex Rieger: I'm Alex. We're friends, we work together.
"Reverend" Jim Ignatowski: What? are we, lumberjacks?
Alex Rieger: No, we're cabdrivers.
"Reverend" Jim Ignatowski: I bet we don't do much business up here!

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Thursday, November 15, 2012

I'm sure you've heard tell of the coconut monkey trap. You tether a hollowed-out coconut with a treat inside. The monkey reaches in to grab the pretty but his fist is too big to exit the hole. So he is captured because he is unwilling to let go of his prize.

Hostess Brands CEO said Wednesday the company will liquidate unless striking workers return to the job by the end of the day on Thursday.

"We simply do not have the financial resources to survive an ongoing national strike," Greg Rayburn said in a statement.

Workers are protesting a contract imposed by a bankruptcy court. The bakers union has called the contract "outrageous."

A liquidation would result in more than 18,000 workers losing their jobs...

It may be some sort of mob dynamic that allows highly paid workers to throw everything away rather than accept a setback. They have a clear choice: accept an 8% pay cut, and work, or demand a wage that kills the company and enter unemployment in this unstable economy.

Why is there even 5 minutes thought wasted on this choice? It doesn't help that unemployment and food stamps beckon on the one side, and living with a two inch smaller plasma TV awaits on the other. Hmmm, what to do?

I'm not betting on a happy ending.

So, as Homer Simpson would say, "Stupid monkeys."

In other greedy news: Did you see that Jesse Jackson Jr. (1%) refuses to leave congress unless he gets his disability pay approved? His particular handicap seems to be that he likes to drink and steal money. Poor guy. I wish him luck. This hereditary condition has devastated his life and I can only hope that our tax dollars can do something to soothe his tortured soul.

where does it say the union is highly paid? i work in a unionised production shop, too.

you'd be surprised how far the pay will NOT go, and then told to accept a cut every year to keep the job.

hostess would be more profitable if they opneed bakeries in mexico, like nabisco and hershey does. why? because mexico doesnt tax the hell out of sugar, their most important ingredient, in order to prop up a small democrat state.

look at yer hershey bar, see if it says 'made in USA'. it dont because it isnt.

I suppose I shouldn't assume, but I remember they were had pretty desirable jobs a dozen years back when they were called Interstate Bakeries. (not for me, I'd be lost outside the forest, but I had a friend looking into it)

Anyway, even if the pay is not great, it's still pay. It's still a job. And the company is going under.

My union experience was with IAM and I was embarrassed at how they would threaten strikes at the drop of a hat. "The coffee machine is broken, we cannot and will not work under these oppressive conditions!"

The smart move for an individual would be to continue the job but be looking elsewhere.